Monday, April 28, 2008

At the Wall Street Journal, Robert Rozett named five "essential books to keep in mind for Holocaust Remembrance Day on May 2."

Number One on his list:

Nazi Germany and the Jewsby Saul FriedländerHarperCollins, 1997, 2007

The Nazi onslaught against the Jews shattered an entire universe, leaving random fragments. Good historians like Saul Friedländer do their best to collect the fragments and construct a coherent picture despite missing pieces. In "Nazi Germany and the Jews," Friedländer uses an array of sources, including many first-hand accounts, to portray the unfolding war and Holocaust. He shows us Hitler at the center of the crime. But by giving voice to survivors, he never lets the reader forget that the crime itself was perpetrated not by a single evil leader but by humans against fellow humans. The two volumes of this narrative are the best attempt to date by a single author to set forth the history of the Holocaust.

Matthew de Abaitua, Stephen Baxter, Sarah Hall, Steven Hall, Ken MacLeod and Richard Morgan are the six authors shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2008, the UK’s premier prize for science fiction literature. The award ceremony will take place on April 30th as part of the Sci-Fi-London Film Festival.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

At the age of 10, Sarah Anderson's arm was amputated as a result of cancer. She has gone on to write several travel books, including the newly released (in the U.K.) Halfway to Venus, which is "about life with one arm, about phantom and prosthetic limbs, about what hands and arms mean in different cultures and how they are portrayed in art and literature."

Anderson also founded the Travel Bookshop, that formed the setting for the movie Notting Hill.

For the Guardian, she named her top ten books about wilderness. One book on her list:

Terra Incognita by Sara Wheeler

Antarctica is probably the ultimate wilderness - "The last great journey left to man" (Shackleton), but it is of course its interpretation that is most interesting. Sara Wheeler writes beautifully about Antarctica both as a continent and a metaphor, a place in the imagination with which we can all identify.

Junot Díaz's fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories. His debut story collection, Drown was a national bestseller and won numerous awards. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times called The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao “a book that decisively establishes him as one of contemporary fiction's most distinctive and irresistible new voices.”

Saturday, April 19, 2008

For the Wall Street Journal, Frances Kiernan named a five best list of books that helped her understand "the ways of New York society."

Number One on the list:

Washington Squareby Henry James1880

Just about everything I know about New York society I've gleaned from novels while looking for a good story, preferably a romance. If I've sometimes been disappointed, I've never come away empty-handed. I was 15 when I first read this uncharacteristically straightforward tale by the Master, in which he depicts the insular world of his New York childhood, a place where it was only natural to assume that a handsome young gentleman in possession of no fortune must be in search of a rich wife. By the time that I realized that Catherine Sloper, the plain and phlegmatic heiress pursued and then dropped by Morris Townsend, was no spirited Jane Austen heroine, I also understood that love affairs in great novels do not necessarily end well. Just as important, I understood that, for all that it valued fine manners and good breeding, New York society, like the steely-eyed doctor who threatens to disinherit his love-struck daughter, placed an even higher value on protecting its wealth.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

The (U.K.) Telegraph came up with "the perfect library," 110 books across several categories--classics, poetry, literary fiction, romantic fiction, etc.--that comprise the ultimate reading list.

Here are the books from the "history" section:

The Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireEdward Gibbon

Compressing 13 turbulent centuries into one epic narrative, this is often labelled the first 'modern' history book. Gibbon fell back on sociology, rather than superstition, to explain Rome's demise.

A History of the English-Speaking PeoplesWinston Churchill

Taking us from Caesar's 55BC invasion to the Boer War's end in 1902, Churchill’s four-volume saga makes the proud, but now-unfashionable, connection between speaking English and bearing 'the torch of Freedom'.

A History of the CrusadesSteven Runciman

Still the landmark account of the Crusades, Byzantine scholar Runciman's work broke with centuries of Western tradition, claiming the crusading invaders were guilty of a 'long act of intolerance in the name of God'.

The HistoriesHerodotus

Ostensibly about Greece's defeat of the invading Persians in the 5th century BC, it blends fact, hearsay, legend and myth to tell tales of life in and around Ancient Greece.

The History of the Peloponnesian WarThucydides

Famously fastidious over the reliability of his data and sources, Thucydides – with this detailed study of the 25-year struggle between Athens and Sparta – set the template for every historian after him.

Seven Pillars of WisdomT. E. Lawrence

Lawrence of Arabia's fascinating, self-mythologising account of how he united a string of Arab tribes and successfully led them to rebellion against their Ottoman overlords.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Compiled at King Alfred's behest in the AD890s, this is the earliest-known history of England written in old English. It's also the oldest history of any European country in a vernacular language.

A People's TragedyOrlando Figes

Figes charts the Russian Revolution in stark detail, telling the tale of 'ordinary people' and boldly concluding that they 'weren't the victims of the Revolution but protagonists in its tragedy'.

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French RevolutionSimon Schama

Before he was on television, Prof Schama offered 948 pages of proof that there was more to the French Revolution than fraternity, equality and eating cake.

The Origins of the Second World WarA.J.P. Taylor

Was Hitler all that bad? Wasn't he just an opportunist who took advantage of Anglo-French dithering and appeasement? The label 'iconoclastic' applies to few historians so well as it does to Taylor.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Jay Scott Newman, a Catholic priest and canon lawyer, is pastor of St. Mary's Church in Greenville, S.C. He picked the five best "works about the lives of popes" for the Wall Street Journal.

Number One on his list:

The Oxford Dictionary of PopesBy J.N.D. KellyOxford, 1986

Not counting pretenders and anti-popes, the Roman Catholic Church numbers the present bishop of Rome, Benedict XVI, as the 265th Pastor of the Universal Church. J.N.D. Kelly's dictionary is the indispensable reference to every pope from Simon Peter to John Paul II, describing each man and the times in which he lived. Kelly (1909-97), who was a priest in the Church of England and one of the 20th century's greatest scholars of Christian history, accompanied Archbishop Michael Ramsey of Canterbury to Rome in 1966 for an epochal meeting with Pope Paul VI. This visit awakened in Kelly the desire to provide (as he puts it in the dictionary's preface) "a one-volume handbook in English containing systematic, concise accounts of all those who have been, or claimed to be, popes." Kelly succeeded brilliantly, and given that there are still no reliable biographies of even recent popes (like Pius XII, John XXIII and Paul VI), Kelly's work remains the lodestar for those seeking to understand the papacy.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Veteran newsman Roger Mudd picked the five best books about journalism for the Wall Street Journal.

One title on his list:

The Elements of JournalismBy Bill Kovach and Tom RosenstielCrown, 2001

"The purpose of journalism is to provide people with the information they need to be free and self-governing" -- as clear a statement of purpose as has ever been written. Former newspapermen Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel know what they are talking about. The problem, of course, is that journalists labor in an extraordinarily complicated world that sometimes gets in the way. They are paid by the corporation but work for their readers; their copy is screened by editors who are appointed by management; the pressure of entertainment news eats away at their purity; and their owners, more and more coming from outside the news business, are motivated primarily by the bottom line. In 1997 the authors assembled the Committee of Concerned Journalists, composed of 25 leading members of the profession, in an attempt to restore journalism's fading credibility. After three years of studies and public forums, Kovach and Rosenstiel laid out the committee's findings in "The Elements of Journalism." The central message: Unless journalists themselves "reclaim the theory of a free press," they "risk allowing their profession to disappear." The book was an immediate best seller. Translated into 22 languages, it is a standard textbook in almost every journalism school in the country. It also belongs on the shelf of every citizen who reads the paper or watches the tube.